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<£f)e Appeal of ftomanistn to <£bumtea Protestants. 



A PAPEE 



HEAD BEFORE THE 



EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE, 



New Yokk, October 8, 1873. 



BY 

RICHARD S. STORRS, D.D., 

OF BROOKLYN, N. Y. 




((? 



NEW YORK: 
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

FRANKLIN SQUARE. 

18 74. 



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-P+dtf 



THE APPEAL OF EOMANISM TO EDUCATED PEOT- 

ESTANTS. 

By the Rev. R. S. STORRS, D.D., Brooklyn, N. Y. 



It is always easy, though always unsafe, 
to underestimate the attractive force of a 
system of belief adverse to our own. Stand- 
ing on the outside of it, we see only its ex- 
ternal proportions. The inner chambers, 
rilled with whatever precious and pleasant 
riches, are hidden from us ; and one must be 
of a remarkably sympathetic and compre- 
hensive mind to be able to enter into them, 
and to see the whole structure as its inhab- 
itants do. 

It is especially difficult for us as Prot- 
estants to understand the attractive power 
of Romanism. Jealousy of it, as of a stealthy 
and dangerous system, careless of virtue, 
eager for power, exquisitely adjusted to win 
mankind by condoning their vices and con- 
secrating their pride — this is an inheritance 
to which we are born. And such hereditary 
impressions ripen with most of us into per- 
sonal conviction. Not only does it seem to 
us hostile to liberty, and to rational progress, 
incompatible with a liberal and fruitful civ- 
ilization; it seems so distinctly to antago- 
nize the Gospel, so positively to contradict 
the fundamental ideas of the Divine Gov- 
ernment — dissociating religion from morali- 
ty, and destiny from character — its descrip- 
tion and its doom seem so luridly and in- 
delibly written in history, that we can not, 
without a distinct and strenuous effort, un- 
derstand how any should accept it. 

We have, therefore, been wont to regard 
the Roman Church as the Church of the 
ignorant and the superstitious alone ; to ex- 
pect that those born and trained within it 
will come out from it, with intelligent pro- 
test or with passionate revolt, when they 
shall have reached a higher level of educa- 
tion and moral force; and it has seemed 
well-nigh incredible that any one educated 
under Protestant influences should be al- 
lured into its fold. 

When such a one has gone to its commun- 
ion, we have been apt to feel that he must 
have been moved either by a desire for po- 
litical preferment, and the aid of the priest- 
hood in his personal schemes; or by the 
wish for terms of salvation which would 
leave his lusts free, and yet quiet his fears ; 
or by regard for particular teachers, as New- 
man or Faber in England, Brownson, Heck- 
er, or Hewit, in this country ; or that he was 
attracted by the tone of authority, and the 
29 



splendid pomp of the outward spectacle ; 
or that he was moved by a general uncer- 
tain eccentricity of mind, which might have 
made him a Shaker or a Mormon, but which, 
by chance, did make him a Papist ; or, final- 
ly, that it has been with him a blind leap 
after belief, in a desperate reaction from the 
lonely gloom of infidelity. 

In one or other of these ways we almost 
always account for the transfer to Roman- 
ism of one who has been educated outside 
its influences; while at last we are often 
constrained to leave it, as a strange phe- 
nomenon, not wholly explained by any 
thing which the man himself has said, or 
any thing which our thoughts can suggest. 

For some have gone who have certainly 
not been thus impelled ; of whose change no 
one of the motives which I have mentioned 
gives any more account than it does of the 
origin of the Paradise Lost. They are seri- 
ous, devout, conscientious persons, intent on 
learning, and then on doing, the will of the 
Almighty ; of no peculiar turn of mind, wit h 
no marked predominance of imagination or 
emotional sensibility ; many of them edu- 
cated in the best and most liberal Protestant 
schools ; some of them among the noblest of 
their time, whom it is a serious loss to us to 
lose. 

And it is to be distinctly observed that 
these men accept the system of Romanism 
with no languor or reserve, with no esoter- 
ic and half-Protestant interpretation of it, 
with no thought at all of modifying its dog- 
mas for their personal use by the exercise 
of a private judgment upon them. They 
take the system as it stands. They take it 
altogether. They look with pity, not un- 
mixed with contempt, on those who are ea- 
ger to adopt its phraseology and to mimic 
its ceremonies, while declining to submit 
their minds to its mandates ; and for them- 
selves they confess doctrines which seem to 
us incredible, and conform themselves to 
practices which look to us like idolatrous 
mummery, with gladness and pride. 

Now, what moves these men ? What is 
the attraction which the system presents 
to such as these, in Germany, England, this 
country? — an attraction which is strong 
enough to wholly detach them from their 
early associations, and to make them devo- 
tees of a spiritual power which from child- 



450 



ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 



hood they were taught to dread and to de- 
test ? I 

It is this question to which I am asked to 
give a partial and rapid answer. Of course 
it must he an imperfect answer, since I am 
not a Romanist, in any sense or any meas- 
ure. On the other hand, I am a Congrega- 
tionalist, in the broadest significance ; be- 
lieving for myself, without the wish to im- 
pose the belief on any body else, that each 
society of believers, permanently associated 
for the worship of God, and for the cele- 
bration of Christian ordinances, is a proper 
and complete church; competent to elect 
and ordain its officers, to administer the 
sacraments, and to fashion its rules and its 
ritual, under Christ, while bound to main- 
tain and teach his truth, to honor the law of 
Christian purity, and to live in unity of spir- 
it, and in fellowship of good works, with all 
similar societies. So far, therefore, as the 
Roman organization is concerned, I stand at 
almost the furthest remove from it ; with no- 
body beyond me, so far as I know, unless it 
be the Society of Friends. 

And concerning the whole immense sys- 
tem which that organization represents and 
subserves, I confess my sympathy with the 
most radical of the Reformers. I believe 
that the Fathers were thoroughly right in 
revolting against Rome ; that we are under 
the highest obligations to maintain that re- 
volt ; and that Christian civilization would 
perish from the earth, if the Papal suprema- 
cy should become universal. 

So it can not be that I should understand 
the system, or feel its attractions, as those 
do who live in it ; and if they were here to 
speak for themselves, they might well de- 
cline to have me represent them. But I can 
see some of the fascinating features which 
Romanism offers to its disciples, and can 
understand, in a measure at least — as it 
has been part of my business to understand 
— the appeal which it makes to educated 
Protestants. And from among its attract- 
ive forces, selecting them for their promi- 
nence and as easy to he exhibited, I will 
specify eight. 

1. The prime secret of its attractiveness 
for such minds is, I think, that it claims to 
offer them in the Roman Church a present, 
living, authoritative Teacher; which has 
the mind of God immanent in it ; which is 
the witness and the interpreter of Revela- 
tion, and is itself the living medium of such 
Revelation; which has thus authority to 
decide on all questions of religious doctrine 
and duty, and whose decisions, when an- 
nounced, are infallibly correct, and unspeak- 
ably important. This is its first claim ; im- 
perative in tone, stupendous in substance, 
unique in its kind, and very effective. 

According to it, as you are aware, the 
bishops iu communion with the See of Pe- 
ter are the Ecclesia docens; the divinely con- 



stituted, perpetual, inerrant corporation, in 
which Christ, by the Holy Ghost, is always 
present ; which is filled, in its totality, with 
his inspiration, and which thus utters, in its 
decrees, his voice to the world. It does not 
merely articulate the general Christian con- 
sciousness of truth or of duty ; it speaks 
Christ's mind, as the apostles did in their 
day, with a superior fitness to modern needs, 
and with an equivalent, an identical author- 
ity. 

Debate is, therefore, always in order till 
the Church has spoken. But after that, 
doubt is a deadly sin. For it is not a mere 
perilous dissent from the majority. It is, 
in its essence, infidelity to Christ. And, on 
the other hand, the belief of the faithful in 
a dogma properly formulated and declared 
needs no argument, allows no hesitation, and 
asks for no support of reason. It is imme- 
diate and final ; since it rests solidly on the 
utterance of the Church, which is to it the 
testimony of God. 

This may seem to us immensely absurd, 
looked at in the light of 'history. It may 
seem prodigiously to transcend all the pre- 
rogatives promised by the Lord to the Church 
to which his truth was given. We may 
hold ourselves able to count the rings by 
which the successive increments of influence 
gathering to that Church hardened at last 
into the tough and oaken fibre of this un- 
yielding and gigantic claim. It may seem 
to us to put dishonor on the Bible. And we 
may feel that it reproduces, with strange ex- 
actness, with an almost fearful fidelity, the 
prediction of Paul concerning that Son of 
Perdition of whom he forewarned the Thes- 
salonian disciples, " that he, as God, sitteth 
in the temple of God, showing himself that 
he is God." But the claim thus outlined 
has certainly a subtle and grand attraction 
for many minds. They do not feel limited, 
harassed, or forcibly overborne by this Di- 
vine authority iu the Church. On the con- 
trary, they feel invigorated and elevated by 
it, because holding themselves assured of the 
truth, by the very voice of God, speaking now 
as at the beginning, only speaking now, in 
tenderness to them, not through trumpet or 
tempest, in articulate thunders or earthquake 
throes, but through the consenting votes and 
voices of consecrated men. 

It seems to them the grand privilege of 
their minds to have such a Church ; the con- 
temporary of the apostles ; full now, as at 
Pentecost, of the Holy Ghost ; a majestic, 
abiding, undeceivable power, the very body 
of Christ, through which the present benig- 
nant Lord, always in the world, declares with 
perfect clearness and certainty what is to 
be believed and what to be done. All their 
expectations of progress and success in the 
attainment of divine knowledge rest on this ; 
and their minds are profoundly animated by 
it. A present revelation, not one in the past 



STORES: THE APPEAL OF ROMANISM TO EDUCATED PROTESTANTS. 451 



— a revelation through men, not through a j 
book — is that which, according to their con- j 
ception, now brings to them the thoughts of \ 
the Eternal. 

Especially in times like ours, when relig- | 
ious doubt is passionate and ubiquitous, j 
when a whirling and vehement skepticism 
darkens and hurtles in all the air, they greet j 
with peculiar desire and welcome such a ba- ; 
sis of certainty, such a guaranty of the truth, j 
such a centre of enlightening and unifying 
authority. Amidst the many divisions of 
Christendom they long for this the more. 
And the Bible, interpreted by each for him- 
self, seems in no degree to meet their want ; 
while neither of the most cultured Protest- 
ant churches offers it satisfaction. 

Most of all, if they have themselves been 
assailed by the skeptical spirit, and have 
wavered and wandered in restless inquiry 
on the great themes of the soul's well-being, 
they feel attracted to such a Church, claim- 
ing such a prerogative, and offering such 
relief and assurance ; as Dollinger says of 
Christina of Sweden, that she " took refuge 
in the ship of ecclesiastical authority from 
the ocean of philosophical doubt." 

And every mind must admit, I think, that j 
there is a certain inspiring grandeur, august 
yet winning, in such a conception of God's 
enduring and holy Church ; that however 
far the ambitious corporation whose heart j 
is Jesuitism, and whose head is the Pope, j 
may fail of Tealizing it, the ideal itself is ! 
lofty and seductive; and that our timid i 
and limited human nature, surrounded by 
so many puzzles, and faced by such tremen- 
dous problems, may well at times admit the 
wish that such a conception had been per- 
mitted of God to be realized, and had not 
been left, as we assuredly hold it to have 
been, a delusive dream. 

This is the first of the attractions of Ro- 
manism, to an educated mind. Another is — 

2. That it claims to offer to such a mind 
a body of doctrine, mysterious, no doubt, in 
some of its parts, but on the whole solid, con- 
sistent, consecutive, complete ; containing 
what they accept as a sufficient and satisfy- I 
ing answer to the questions of the soul, the 
antithesis to infidelity in all its forms, and | 
the consummation of what is true in other j 
systems. It boasts that in this not only the 
Scripture is fulfilled, but philosophy is illu- j 
mined, man's history is interpreted, God's 
ways to man are clearly vindicated ; and the ' 
appeal which it makes, through this doctri- 
nal scheme, is of immense persuasive force, i 

The scheme, of course, starts, as every or- I 
ganized theology must, with the doctrine of 
Original Sin. 

Socinianism affirms that man's nature and 
spirit are right at birth ; that they involve, j 
at any rate, no innate and governing pro- ' 
pensities to sin, and only need education, ' 
with favorable circumstances, to develop all 



forms of goodness and virtue. So it holds 
Jesus a created teacher, the Holy Ghost an 
impersonal influence, and regeneration a 
monkish myth. 

The Evangelical doctrine affirms that man, 
as originally created, was like God in nature, 
and like him also in moral perfection ; hav- 
ing the true knowledge of him, and standing 
in intimate communion with him through 
the sympathy of supreme and holy love; that 
no one of his constitutional powers was lost 
in the fall, though their activity was per- 
verted, and their development hindered; 
but that the change which then took place 
was in the essential temper of his heart — 
selfish idolatry and sinful passion supplant- 
ing the Divine love which had preceded, and 
the inmost dispositions and tendencies of 
the soul being thereafter averted from God, 
and directed to selfish pleasure and gain. 

The change now needed, therefore, is in 
this dominant spirit of the heart ; to alter 
the dispositions, to fix the supreme affection 
upon God, and to restore the spiritual dis- 
cernment which was possessed, but has been 
lost. And this is effected by the Divine Spir- 
it, through the truth as his instrument, and 
especially through the revelation of God's 
love, as declared, with transcendent fullness 
and tenderness, in his Son. When this is 
accomplished, no direct addition is implied 
to the inherent properties of the soul, but a 
change is realized in its temper, tastes, and 
spiritual activities, in its relations to God, 
and its personal destiny; a change so rad- 
ical, vital, complete, and so enduring in con- 
sequences, as to constitute a true regenera- 
tion. Conversion, to the loving obedience 
of Christ, is its sign and fruit. The beauty 
of holiness flows from it into life. It is com- 
pleted in sanctification. And, on the ground 
of Christ's atonement, he who has not yet 
reached that sanctity, but in whom its prin- 
ciple has been implanted, is reconciled to 
God, and is treated as if he had been right- 
eous ; is, in other words, justified. 

Preaching the Gospel is therefore here the 
means of regeneration. To lead men to af- 
fectionate faith in God, as made manifest in 
his Son, is the office of the ministry. He 
who has most of this faith in his heart, oth- 
er things being equal, is best adapted to ex- 
cite it in others. The Church and its sacra- 
ments are the instruments of God for propa- 
gating in the world the truth concerning 
him, as revealed in his Word, and for main- 
taining in renovated men the faith and love 
which by his Spirit have been inspired. 
His wisdom and grace are illustriously ex- 
hibited in this plan of redemption ; the an- 
gels take new conceptions of him from it ; 
and man is brought back to a holy love 
which commemorates Paradise, and which 
prophesies heaven ; which, being made com- 
plete and immortal, must make a heaven, 
though every gate of pearl should vanish. 



452 



ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 



This is the Evangelical doctrine. The 

Romanist system differs from it in essentia] 
particulars. It also holds that man is fall- 
en, and inwardly depraved, but in this dis- 
tinct sense: — By the image of God, in which 
he was created, it understands his rational 
and voluntary nature alone, by no exercise 
of which conld he attain true inward right- 
eousness, the knowledge of God, or the bea- 
tific vision. This nature being left to itself, 
the flesh must fight against the spirit, con- 
cupiscence gaiu the mastery, disorder and 
corruption follow. To prevent this result 
were therefore superadded in Adam, by the 
grace of God, the supernatural gifts of Di- 
vine knowledge and righteousness, through 
which the spirit, re-enforced from its Mak- 
er, was enabled to rule and restrain the 
flesh "as with a golden curb," and to rise 
to communion with the Almighty. 

It was these Divine supernatural gifts 
which Adam forfeited in the fall, sacri- 
ficing them for his posterity as well as for 
himself, so that all men now are born with- 
out them ; are horn in the state in which 
Adam was before he possessed them. And 
through this loss comes again the victory 
of concupiscence, the flesh everywhere con- 
quering and debasing the undefended spirit. 
There is, therefore, nothing to be effectually 
done for the soul of man, for its holiness and 
its peace, until these gifts have been restored 
to it. Without them, whatever teaching it 
may have, and whatever high influence 
through that teaching, it is naturally in- 
capable of aspiring to share the wisdom, 
the holiness, and the blessedness of God, as 
the flower is of flight, or the bird of solving 
a question in morals; and, without them, 
its course is continually downward, toward 
darker depths of ignorance and of sin. 

It is to supply this need of men, then, that 
the incarnation of God in Jesus is divine- 
ly ordained and divinely accomplished ; to 
make up to the soul, which has suffered a loss 
so essential and extreme, for this tremen- 
dous transmitted deprivation. By that in- 
carnation the supernatural gift which Adam 
forfeited is introduced anew into the world ; 
and it thenceforth is distributed, by the Holy 
Ghost, through the priesthood of the Church, 
and on its sacraments. It is properly given 
at the beginning of life, before activity has 
commenced, at the outset of consciousness. 

It is communicated in Baptism ; in which 
is effected an instant, essential, complete re- 
generation — the infusion of a supernatural 
life, the removal of all corruption of sin, the 
immediate and full introduction of the soul 
into the spiritual household of God. All 
the saving benefits of Christ's redemption 
are thus and there conveyed to the soul, 
as it enters upou life, and begins the career 
which can never close. 

The grace thus imparted is afterward con- 
firmed in Confirmation. 



It is nourished and renewed in the sacra- 
ment of the Eucharist. 

It is restored, if lost, in the sacrament of 
Penance. 

It is replenished and re-enforced in the sac- 
rament of Marriage, by which human love is 
exalted and transformed into holy affection. 

It is renewed, for those who receive this, 
in the sacrament of Orders. 

It is finally sealed, aud divinely com- 
pleted, in the Extreme Unction ; after which 
the soul, pursued and attended with gifts 
of grace from birth to death, goes forth to 
meet the grand assize. 

Regeneration aud Sanctification are, of 
course, synonymous with Justification, ou 
this system. 

The sacraments are efficacious means of 
grace ; having power to convey grace, by 
the Divine appointment, as material food 
has to nourish the body, or cold to congeal, 
or fire to burn. 

Transubstantiation is a necessity to the 
system, the means of realizing continually 
on earth the gift which came with Incarna- 
tion. 

The succession of the priesthood is an in- 
evitable part of it ; as much so as is the suc- 
cession of generations to a continued human 
history. The lines of transmission must be 
uninterrupted ; but personal purity in the 
priest is nowise essential to the virtue of 
his sacraments. 

True spiritual life is a thing impossible 
outside the Church, and miracles are still to 
be expected within it. For it is the super- 
natural Saviour, constantly present in the 
supernatural Church, who gives authority 
to every priest, and gives its efficacy to ev- 
ery sacrament ; aud, if he shall will it, the 
lame may now leap, the canvas become di- 
vinely luminous, the solid marble tremble 
into speech. 

The visible Church is the permanent Di- 
vine kingdom in the world, whose numeric- 
al limits are exactly defined ; and the state 
of each soul after death is absolutely deter- 
mined by the relation it has held to that 
Church and its sacraments. 

This is, in brief, the substance of the doc- 
trine. Of course it seems to us in sharp 
contrast with the Sermon on the Mount ; 
with the teachings and the letters of Paul 
and his associates ; with the very frame aud 
aim of the Gospel ; with consciousness itself, 
and the self-revealing facts of Christian ex- 
perience. The vices which have risen, and 
rankly flourished, in the Roman communion 
— its own historians being the witnesses — 
are testimony against it. The spiritual at- 
tainments of persons and of peoples under 
Protestant influences become inexplicable, 
if it be true ; they explicitly contradict it. 

The answer is immediate, and is to us 
overwhelming. But the system is logical, 
consistent, very commanding, and to many 



STORES : THE APPEAL OF ROMANISM TO EDUCATED PROTESTANTS. 453 



thoughtful and questioning minds very at- 
tractive. 

Whatever there is of mystery, height, in- 
spiring power, in our doctrine of the Incar- 
nation or of the Trinity, is here as well ; 
whatever of solemn motive and warning 
in the doctrine of the Fall, and of Human 
Depravity, and of the Judgment for which 
we wait. And the advocates of this system 
hold it complete, while ours is partial ; theirs 
finished, and ours fragmentary. 

They do not in the least regard this sys- 
tem as tending to suhvert a sound morality, 
sincere and spiritual piety, belief in Christ 
as the author of grace and. justification, hut 
as simply essential to all these. And while 
they recognize Evangelical Protestantism as 
containiug still some elements of the truth, 
they look upon these as scattered timbers, 
not built into a house, and not sufficient to 
make one; as plates of iron, worthless sep- 
arately, and not capable of being framed 
together, except upon the Roman plan, into 
the vast and symmetrical fabric which is to 
bear up, over whelming waves, the heart 
and hope and faith of the world. 

By its claim of authority, and by this ar- 
ticulated body of doctrine, Romanism has a 
continual attractiveness for many fine minds. 

3. There is, too, a vast and subtile power 
in the representations which it presents of 
the invisible and spiritual world, and the 
intimate relations which it declares as al- 
ways subsisting between that world and 
this. 

The human spirit, conscious of affections, 
and haunted by premonitions, that overpass 
death, is always reaching out, with eager 
desire or with forecasting fear, after knowl- 
edge of the world which lies beyond its 
sense or science; a knowledge more exact 
and complete than God in his wisdom has 
seen fit to bestow. So necromancy is never 
dead; and so Spiritism comes, in our own 
time, to tip its tables and rap its floors, in 
a juggling offer to disclose the Unseen. Its 
incitement is in the hunger of the soul for 
some apprehension of the realms whose 
bounds, of beauty or fire, it has not reached. 

And now Protestantism, which limits it- 
self to what has been clearly expressed iu 
the Bible, and w^hich deals timidly even with 
that, seems vague, undefined, and. essential- 
ly unsatisfying, in its treatment of all that 
mystic domain which lies before us, in com- 
parison with the exact descriptions which 
Romanism presents. 

This affirms that those who die after bap- 
tism — really regenerate, and having com- 
mitted no unforgiven and mortal sin, yet 
confessedly imperfect in action and in vir- 
tue — are to undergo, in the future state, 
certain temporal pains, by which they are to 
be purified, and satisfaction to be rendered 
to the Divine Justice ; that these pains may 
be abridged by the offering of prayers, pen- 



ances, and alms, and of the unbloody sacri- 
fice, on the part of those who tarry behind; 
and that the limiting or remitting of the 
pains is within the prerogative of the au- 
thorities of the Church. 

So friends who linger, Wth aching hearts, 
on this side of the grave, haA T e power still to 
bless their dead. Across the far untrodden 
spaces they can send reliefs, and tidings of 
joy, to those who have vanished from their 
sight. And, in return, they maj 7 receive real 
aids and blessings from the dead. Those 
now sainted aud beatified can intercede 
with God for us, and will do this if we in- 
voke them. They are living, conscious, in 
the presence of God„in enjoyment of the be- 
atific vision, yet informed of what Ave need 
and desire — perhaps by the mind of God 
himself — and are fraternally sympathetic 
with us. We may pay them homage : not 
the Latreia, due to God only, or the Uper- 
douleia, due to the Virgin Mother, but the 
Doulda, proper to saints. And Ave may im- 
plore with joyful freedom their ready as- 
sistance as intercessors for us Avith the Al- 
mighty. 

Angels, too, in their power and splendor, 
and their relative sovereignty over nature 
and life, are still the guardian spirits of 
men — of the least and humblest, to whom 
has come God's gift through Christ. 

Especially the Virgin Mother of Christ 
may be asked to aid us, with her tender 
sympathy, and her unbounded power with 
her Son. The growth of reverence for her 
in the Roman Church shows how dear and 
alluring the thought of her is to the miuds 
of mankind. The vision of her seems to flash 
a certain tender light OA'er realms that were 
otherwise so high as to be dreadful. First, 
her perpetual virginity is declared. Then, 
she is formally styled and proclaimed the 
Mother of God. Then temples are built, aud 
prayers are arranged to be offered to her, 
as Queen of HeaA r en. Then her immaculate 
conception, without stain of original sin, is 
declared to be a dogma of faith. Now, she 
is undoubtedly more frequently implored in 
the Roman Communion than God or Christ. 

Women and children are especially at- 
tracted — but not they only, the strongest 
and most philosophic are attracted — by the 
thought of a Woman, at once maiden and 
mother, the spotless and illustrious head of 
her sex, so near the eternal throne of the 
universe, while full of gentlest memories and 
lo\ T e.. 

And so the whole mysterious realm be- 
yond the graAX — from which no traveler 
returns to us, the gloom and glory of whose 
shadows and lights harre been reflected on 
thoughtful minds from the outset of histo- 
ry, but the vision of which only death re- 
veals — seems brought nearer the earth, and 
made palpable by Romanism; its inhabit- 
ants to be declared; their relations to us 



434 



ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 



to be revealed as mutual and sympathet- 
ic; our offices for them and tbeira for us to 
be shown surviving the dread separation, 
and still to be accomplished across the vast 
and dim abysses. And however we may dis- 
miss the whole, as unauthorized by the Lord 
and unwarranted by Scripture, the simple 
creation of mini's imagination, as wholly 
ideal as a fancy concerning the civil con- 
stitution of republics in Sirius, we must not 
forget that there is prodigious attraction in 
it for many longing and sensitive souls. It 
seems to them too beautiful in itself, and too 
congruous with their wishes, not to be true. 

4. Then, further, Romanism claims to of- 
fer a greater security of salvation than oth- 
er systems afford ; and to those accustom- 
ed critically and conscientiously to examine 
their inward processes of feeling, their suc- 
cessive vanishing states of mind, and who 
thus come to suspect the reality of their own 
virtue, this is immediately and immensely 
attractive. 

For feeling seems to fly, as wo touch it 
with our analysis, almost as life flits and 
fleets beneath the destructive dissecting 
edge. Spiritual states inevitably disappear 
when we look away from that which in- 
spires them, and search, with an introverted 
scrutiny, after themselves. Many a person 
of a sincere piety questions, therefore, if he 
may not have been deceiving himself as to 
the realness of his faith and repentance ; if 
what seemed contrition may not have been 
an unloving fear of the consequences of sin ; 
if what had been taken for Christian faith 
may not have been an assent of the under- 
standing, with no affectionate devoutness of 
spirit to make it vital. 

He questions this all the more as his rev- 
erence for God becomes more supreme, and 
his personal humility becomes more com- 
plete. He questions it most of all when he 
fronts, face to face, the tremendous facts of 
Death, Judgment, and the long Hereafter. 
Because a mistake must have such conse- 
quences, he is tremulously ready to suspect 
its existence. The fact that he suspects it 
seems to furnish fresh evidence that he has 
made it ; and the passage is no long one 
from such a doubt to remorseful despond- 
ency. 

Now, in such a mood of apprehensive self- 
questioning, Romanism appeals to him with 
a prodigious force of invitation. For, what- 
ever the fact may prove to be when its of- 
fers are analyzed, it seems to propose certain 
definite and practicable conditions of salva- 
tion, which appear as unmistakable as the 
ladder against a burning house, or the life- 
boat at sea. 

Baptism, confirmation, the eucharist, con- 
fession, penance, obedience to the Church, 
absolution by the priest, in whom authority 
to pronounce it has been vested by God, and 
whose declaration is ratified in heaven, the 



final anointing, and then, if any thing stilt 
remain of unfulfilled obligation, a full and 
eternal satisfaction to God by temporary 
pains beyond this life — this is the plan 
which it proposes, and on which it offers 
the assurance of heaven. 

It will certainly turn out that all this 
presupposes certain spiritual states in him 
who adopts it, without which it becomes 
confessedly ineffectual, and that the same 
doubts which perplexed him before may, 
therefore, here as easily arise ; and it also 
will appear that an intention of the priest 
is needful to the efficacy of every sacra- 
ment, of which intention the man who re- 
ceives this can never have certain and in- 
fallible proof; while it seems to us as plain 
as the stars that the whole scheme is want- 
iug in Scriptural authority ; that it is not 
implied in the words of the Master, nor in 
any teaching of his apostles ; that it tends 
to give men a false security, and to substi- 
tute an exact ecclesiastical obedience for 
the faith and love which alone can spirit- 
ually unite men to God. But, after all, it is 
very alluring, especially, as I said, to a mind 
introspective, self - distrustful, conscious of 
sin, and feeling the doom of immortality 
upon it. 

When such a one draws near the point of 
final passage to realms unchanging and eter- 
nal ; when he thinks of the Eye which search- 
es every thought and wish, and traces the 
secret windings of desire ; when he feels on 
his prophetic soul the heat and splendor of 
the great White Throne — to hear God's voice, 
through human lips, giving him quittance 
and final absolution, as Jesus to the loving 
woman, it is a thing which any one might 
desire if he could persuade himself that God 
had committed an authority so awful, an of- 
fice so sovereign, to human hands ! 

5. And still further, Romanism seems to 
many to offer them a higher sanctity of spir- 
it and life than Protestantism does; a sanc- 
tity, indeed, which is wholly peculiar to it, 
and for which Protestantism, under what- 
ever name or form, presents no equivalent. 
So it attracts some whom it is a grief to us 
to lose. 

They want a life set apart from earthly 
care and labor, from desire and pleasure, 
from all the fascinations and entanglements 
of the world; a life devoted to religious 
meditation, and to works of constant benef- 
icence and piety; a life in sympathy with 
that of ancient martyrs and confessors, of 
Agnes and Perpetua, of Basil and Benedict, 
and Francis of Assisi, and of princes who 
left their crowns for Christ ; a life that is 
hid with Christ in God. 

They long for this. Because the spiritual 
nature in them is tender and deep, and has 
been moved by a mighty impulse, it yearns 
with inexpressible desire for fellowship with 
the Lord, and for the utmost possible attain- 



STORES : THE APPEAL OF ROMANISM TO EDUCATED PROTESTANTS. 455 



ment in the Divine virtue. This is, as it 
ought to be, the supreme and inspiring pas- 
sion of their souls, for which they are ready 
to sacrifice all. 

All the more they desire it as life around 
them is hurried and hot, full of ambition, 
lust, and greed. Amidst the rush and glare 
of pleasure, amidst the incessant roar of 
trade, this desire, in finer minds, becomes 
only the more iutense and imperative. It 
has the energy of a recoil from that which 
offends, as well as the strength of a personal 
aspiration. It operates at length like a law 
of their being ; no more to be resisted than 
that which quickens the mother's love, or 
makes self- accusation follow a conscious 
and deliberate sin. " My soul be with the 
saints," they say. The inmost, incessant 
thirst of their hearts is for a celestial life on 
earth. 

And Romanism seems to offer them sat- 
isfaction. The sacraments are declared to 
communicate, and continually afterward to 
renew in the heart, this inner sanctity. 
They invest the whole progress of life on 
earth, and meet and sanctify all its changes. 

Manuals of devotion, wonderfully rich, 
tender, and varied, are offered to the disci- 
ple, to assist him to gain, and then to main- 
tain, the white chastity and the radiant 
charity of this divine life. 

The confessional offers its ear, never shut, 
into which the story of every impulse of 
doubt or passion may be instantly breathed, 
and behind which is a mind declared to be 
instructed of God to clear the doubt and 
quench the passion. 

Calvaries are constructed in Roman Cath- 
olic countries, with successive stations rep- 
resenting the stages of the way to the cross, 
at each of which men may bow and pray, as 
with tender love and shuddering awe they 
climb toward the crucifix. And convents 
and monasteries open to men and women 
alike their hospitable doors, outside which 
all cares and possessions may be left, where 
homes for life are furnished to the devout, 
and within which the world's clamor and 
glitter are unheard and unseen. 

To the active and energetic, for whom rest 
would be weariness, the most arduous and 
dangerous missions are assigned; to pierce 
the forest and the jungle, and spend their 
years among savage tribes ; to face the bit- 
ing arctic cold, and the blazing fierceness of 
tropic heat ; to front the pestilence, shadow- 
ing at once the city and the sea with its 
dark wings. 

Now I need not tell you how fascinating 
is all this — to women of fine and sensitive 
natures, to whom the common life of society 
seems demoralized drudgery ; to men of the 
heroic mould, to whom a supreme self-sacri- 
fice is attractive, and who count a life-long 
service to God the only royal good on earth. 
Protestantism seems to them, in comparison 



with this, gross, secular, essentially earthly, 
in its spirit and aims. When it bids them 
consecrate their business to God, and doing 
it in his fear, to do it all to his glory, it seems 
to them illicitly trying to unite God and 
Mammon. When it insists on the household 
life as the purest and noblest for both men 
and women, it seems to them Epicurean in 
spirit, hazarding the attempt to find a flow- 
ery path to the paradise which can only be 
reached over thorny roughnesses, and entered 
through sorest wrestle and pain. 

Protestant missions are to them too luxu- 
rious ; our labors for the poor appear dainty 
and haughty. And when an order of Prot- 
estant devotees is anywhere established, they 
feel instinctively that that is play, while 
they are in earnest ; that only an absolute 
self-abnegation, guarded by irreversible 
vows, can match the height of their desire. 
So they welcome the severer tasks, the strict- 
er limitations, the more austere and exact- 
ing discipline which Romanism offers, and 
seek in its services the life of God. 

They may be disappointed, with a blast- 
ing surprise that shall blacken and wreck 
their whole subsequent life. 

One of the most impressive pictures which 
the recent traveler sees in Europe is by the 
fertile French Dore", exhibited last year in 
London, representing a young monk, who 
has just learned how greedy and gross his 
associates are, and on whose sad and sensi- 
tive face, as his missal drops in his languid 
hands, is breaking forth the passionate sense 
of disappointment, detestation, of inner re- 
pugnance, and an utter despair. The power 
of the picture is in its reflection of an ex- 
perience not unfamiliar. 

Blanco White, who knew intimately the 
convents of Spain, and whose veracity has 
never been questioned, speaks of those con- 
vents in one of his letters as " those Europe- 
an jungles, where lurks every thing that is 
hideous and venomous." And the key to 
his final entire skepticism, who began public 
life as a devout priest, is found by those 
who know most of his career in that fierce 
sentence. 

But whatever the final experience may 
be, the offer which Romanism makes to these 
men is great and shining ; and it need ex- 
cite no wonder in us that they should find 
it grandly attractive. 

6. Then, with all these forces of attrac- 
tion, the Roman Catholic Church is a vast, 
venerable, historic organization, of une- 
qualed age, of immense extent, whose his- 
tory has, in some of its aspects, been a grand 
one; whose history appears to those whom 
it attracts the one sublimest thing on earth 
— inexplicable, except upon the hypothesis 
of its Divine origin. 

It is to them the Church of the Apostles ; 
which saw the splendor of the Ascension, 
which heard Peter and John at Jerusalem, 



456 



ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 



Paul afterward at Corinth and at Rome, 
and which directly conveys to us the deposi- 
tion of faith received from them. 

It is to them the Church of the Cata- 
combs ; where the new Christian kingdom 
was working underground, in garments of 
sackcloth, along galleries of rock, to over- 
throw and replace the armed empire above. 

It is the Church of the Fathers, and the 
canonized Doctors, to whose learning and 
eloquence, and spiritual insight, the world 
is debtor ; of Clement and Polycarp, of Jus- 
tin Martyr and Hippolytus, of Ambrose, 
Athanasius, and him of the flaming Numidi- 
au heart. 

It is the Church of the great Councils ; 
before which were lowered imperial stand- 
ards, to whose decisions faction bowed, and 
whose creeds and decrees have governed 
and assimilated the mind of Christendom. 

It is the Church of the Middle Ages ; of 
Anselm, Bernard, and Poter the Hermit ; the 
Church which civilized barbarians, liberated 
slaves, organized crusades, built cathedrals, 
established libraries, founded universities ; 
which preserved learning, laws, and arts, 
amidst the shock of terrific forces, iu what 
an ancient Gallicau sacramentary hardly 
exaggerated when it called it "the crash of 
a falling world ;" the Church which taught 
the emerging peoples subjectiou to authori- 
ty, while it set sharp bounds to the rapaci- 
ty of barons, and admonished and ruled the 
haughtiest kings ; the Church which has 
since sent forth its heroic and conquering 
teachers to the ends of the earth, "Ad majo- 
rem Dei gloriam." 

And, ancient as it is, this powerful Church 
appears to them to-day the only power which 
nothing in fact centrally disturbs ; the only 
one which can defy infidelity, rule the licen- 
tious wills of men, subdue and inspire the 
daring and refractory human intellect, en- 
noble and rectify human society; the ouly 
one which science can not shake, nor revo- 
lution dethrone, nor the fiercest antagonism 
of secular interests override and destroy. 

The supremacy of the spiritual order in 
the world appears to them guaranteed by it, 
and by it alone. Secure itself, from all as- 
sault, it judges the world. 

To us, who look on the same long records 
from a wholly different point of view, it 
seems as certain as any thing in experience 
that much of this is unhistorical, is purely 
fanciful; that it has been the Gospel, as a 
spiritual force, working apart from and oft- 
en directly against the Hierarchy, which 
has done the best part of this ; that whoso- 
ever now preaches that Gospel, with fervent 
faith, is the true successor of all the saints ; 
and that the history of the Roman corpora- 
tion, which only came to its full develop- 
ment under Leo and the Gregories, has been 
crowded with bigotry, pride, persecution ; 
with prelatical tyranny, priestly license, and 



popular degradation ; with carnivals of fol- 
ly, and carnivals of crime ; has been black- 
ened with the names of inquisitors like Tor- 
quemada; has been stained, so that hyssop 
can not purge it, by prelates and pontiff's 
like the Borgias and the Medicis. 

This is our conception of it. But to those 
minds whose different attitude toward it I 
am trying to present, the opposite aspect is 
the one which it offers ; and often they are 
profoundly impressed by it. They seem to 
themselves ennobled by partaking in a his- 
tory which looks so sacred and august. They 
feel themselves confederate with the men, 
God's champions in the world, whose ma- 
jestic achievements amaze and delight them. 
They are strengthened for swifter and grand- 
er work by all the heroic wisdom and devo- 
tion to which the Church appears to them 
heir. A baptism of power falls on them 
from the past, which is animating and pre- 
cious beyond all words. And this is an ap- 
peal which we must not overlook, if we would 
master the secret of their zeal. 

7. Still further, too, we must not forget 
that Romanism powerfully appeals to these 
men by its cordial relations with all the 
fine arts ; with music, painting, sculpture, 
architecture ; with whatever impresses and 
most delights the senses and the taste. 

Its cathedrals are the wonders of the 
world : mountains of rock- work set to mu- 
sic. 

Its elaborate, opulent, mighty masses 
make the common hymn-tunes of Protest- 
antism sound almost like the twitter of. 
sparrows, amidst the alternate triumph and 
wail of commingling winds. 

Its ritual is splendid, scenic, impressive, 
to the ultimate degree ; and all is exquisite- 
ly pervaded and modulated by the doctrine 
which underlies it, every gesture, every pos- 
ture, of the officiating priest, and every vest- 
ment which he wears, being full of signifi- 
cance. 

Its liturgical forms have not merely been 
arranged by studious men, with apt and 
practiced gifts for the office. They have 
some of them been born of those immense 
crises in personal or iu public experience 
when intensity of feeling, surpassing all po- 
etic impulse, infused spiritual fire into the 
sentences. Not ouly reminiscences are in 
them, therefore, of perils passed and victo- 
ries achieved; their present utterance is 
that of the faith which soared upward from 
the flame, or looked from the damp darkness 
of dungeons and beheld above the heavens 
opened. And architecture can not be too 
majestic to echo such voices. The tone- 
speech of music, in its most tender or jubi- 
lant strains, becomes their meek and glad 
handmaid. 

Nothing, therefore, is too ornate or mag- 
nificent to be incorporated in the superb 
ceremonial of this immense organism. It 



STORES : THE APPEAL OF ROMANISM TO EDUCATED PROTESTANTS. 457 



marches, as it fights, au army with banners.. 
It would copy, if it could, the very ceremo- 
nial of the Temple above. The king's daugh- 
ter is all glorious within, and her raiment 
must be of wrought gold. 

To one who wants his whole aesthetic na- 
ture gratified and educated in his worship, 
while it shall be also and always subordi- 
nated to spiritual attainment — who accepts 
this nature as from God, and feels its thrill- 
ing and sweet impulsions demanding a law- 
ful aud large domain — there is here a con- 
stant and vast attraction. Other, more strict- 
ly intellectual services, appear to him barren 
and frigid in comparison. He seems to him- 
self to be honoring God with a worthier wor- 
ship, while gaining for himself a peculiar 
delight, by making the sanctuary a poem in 
stone, and then bringing into it the purple 
and the gold, the veils of silk, and fragrant 
incense, by hanging it with pictures, and 
paneling its walls with significant marbles. 
It is not the understanding alone, or the 
moral nature, which that worship is de- 
signed to enlist. The imagination is to be 
reached by it, and profoundly stimulated. 
The most secret sources of feeling are to 
be searched ; the most delicate aud retiring- 
sympathies. The whole soul is to be suf- 
fused with its subtile influence, as the atmos- 
phere of the church is struck through with 
golden or crimson lights, till holy memories 
arise within oue ; till he is wrapped in sweet 
ecstasy of reveries ; till he is conscious of 
undefined aud transporting expectations, and 
almost waits to hear around, upon the charm- 
ed aud perfumed air, the rustle of angelic 
plumes. 

The apostles worshiped well and truly, 
not at all in this way. The Saviour made 
no suggestion of this to the womau of Sa- 
maria, when he taught her how to offer 
her devotions. Our fathers found delight 
in praise, and were heard in their prayer, 
though offering it in rudest forms, under 
bleakest skies, because incense stifled them, 
and the gorgeous vestments seemed to them 
dipped in the blood of the saints. We do 
not maintain the passion of their reaction ; 
but we, too, are afraid of that sensuous pleas- 
ure which may be easily coufouuded with 
worship, while wholly dissimilar ; which 
may leave the soul intoxicate with joy, 
while utterly wanting in the devout love 
which links to God, and in the faith which 
conquers death. 

But the convert to Romanism delights 
himself in this service; so rich and tender, 
so various and so ancient, with a passionate 
fondness ; while the occasional attempts of 
ambitious High-churchmen to emulate that 
which the blending genius of many centu- 
ries aud lands has produced are to him sim- 
ply ludicrous ; like building another equal 
St. Peter's of scantling and boards, or repro- 
ducing Warwick Castle in cake and sujxar. 



8. Aud, finally, let us not forget that Ro- 
manism offers to these men what they ac- 
cept as the Church of the Future ; through 
which, continuing to the end of time, and 
only growing mightier with age, the per- 
fect society shall be realized on earth. We 
have not reached the hiding of its power till 
we recognize this. 

It presents itself as ancient, but as still 
in the fullness of unworn strength ; as hav- 
ing the compactness, the hardihood, the con- 
fidence, which come with a long and vast ex- 
perience, but as combining with this the ar- 
dor of its most fervent aud hopeful youth. 

It seems conservative, beyond all other 
human societies; since its government is, 
aud must always continue, iu the hands of 
a trained and practiced class, shrewd, vig- 
ilant, closely combined, everywhere repre- 
sented. It seems communistic, beyond the 
dream of auy Socialist; since all baptized 
persons are made equally its members, and 
if continuing subject to the Church are one, 
eternally, in Christ Jesus. 

It claims to be eminently the Church for 
the rich; whose utmost treasures can not 
rival its revenues, whose titles and pedi- 
grees it immensely surpasses, and whose 
palaces dwindle before its cathedrals. 

It claims, more emphatically, to be the 
Church for the poor ; for whom its build- 
ings and many services are always open, on 
whose behalf it builds great hospitals, to 
whom it preaches in historic cathedrals, like 
Notre Dame in Paris or the Duomo at Milan, 
as well as in the humblest chapels, aud he- 
fore whom it displays the most exquisite 
splendors of its magnificent ritual. 

Compare its churches with ours, open only 
on Sunday, aud then occupied chiefly by the 
cultured and the prosperous, and ours look 
partial, exclusive, iu the contrast ; careless 
of those for whom the Lord died, aud in 
whom he now presents himself to us. 

It is limited to no nation, this ever-ex- 
panding, exploring Church; but is equally 
at home on every coast, and under every 
form of government. It grasps the most 
barbarous, while it trains the most civil- 
ized. It has an office for every power, and 
has a lure for every desire. Its plans ex- 
tend to all the lauds, and anticipate iu their 
reach the coming generations. And that 
perennial energy of it which is shown on 
the one hand in its doctrinal progress from 
dogma to dogma, till now it has concentrated 
such transcendent authority in the person 
of the Pops, on the other hand is shown in 
the missionary work which, radiating from 
Rome, is ever proceeding, with uncounted 
expenditure of money and of life, with un- 
wearied patience, and an unsurpassed skill, 
on every shore where life is found. 

If any institution seems likely to endure, 
then, by reason of its inherent strength, and 
in the absence of Divine interventions, this 



458 



ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 



Is the one. To those who see in it the king- 
dom of God, made visible in the world, and 
filled with his eternal force, nothing else 
which is future seems as certain as this. It 
saw the downfall of the empire of Rome. 
Unchanged itself, it has watched the change. 
and seen the end, of kingdoms and thrones 
from that day to this. They expect it to 
see the end of those which now look stately 
and strong on earth, and to have the per- 
petuity which, can belong to nothing else 
upon this whirling, inconstant planet. 

It is to them still in the beginning of its 
years. They anticipate the time when it 
shall have reconquered Germany and En- 
gland, shall have conquered this country, 
shall have reconciled to itself the severed 
and feebler Eastern Churches, shall have set 
the cross above the crescent, shall have bap- 
tized Buddhist and Brahmin in its faith, 
shall have come to the full inheritance of 
the earth. And then they expect the per- 
fect society, through the wisdom, justice, and 
spiritual sanctity, which it will everywhere 
propagate and maintain. 

They glory in being permitted to reach 
forward, through this expanding, enduring 
organization, to mould the distant future 
of the world; not limitiug themselves to a 
fugitive influence, which shall have passed 
when they are buried, but projecting their 
influence directly and sensibly into the fu- 
ture, and with the mightiest instrument of 
time working for the good of the latest gen- 
erations. 

In the ultimate triumph, of this Church of 
their devotion they expect the Millennium ; 
and in the peaceful glories of that they look, 
each one, to have some share. It is a great 
anticipation. We must not wonder if it 
grapples their hearts as with hooks of steel. 

So it is, then, Fathers and Brethren, as I 
conceive it, and so far as the time allows me 
to state it, that Romanism appeals to edu- 
cated Protestants ; as offering them an au- 
thoritative teacher, always present, in which 
it claims that the mind of God resides and 
is revealed ; as presenting what it affirms to 
be a solid, consistent, and satisfying theolo- 
gy ; as claiming to bring the spiritual world 
more clearly and closely to their minds, and 
to show their relations to it more intimate ; 
as professing to give them a security of sal- 
vation unattainable elsewhere ; as offering 
them what it declares the only true sancti- 
ty of spirit and life ; as showing a long and 
venerable history ; as welcoming and cher- 
ishing all the fine arts, and making these its 
constant helpers ; as promising to rebuild 
and purify society, and at last to possess 
and regenerate the earth. 

To those who are attracted by it, it seems 
to have all which other systems possess or 
claim, and to add vital elements which oth- 
ers lack, supplying their imperfections, sur- 



passing their power, and meeting wants 
which they can neither interpret nor an- 
swer. 

It influences men by its immense mass, 
without their conscious discrimination of its 
separate attractions. Its bulk is so gigantic, 
its energy so incessant, that it seems to them 
to verify its claims without other argument, 
and to make a private judgment against it 
the most rash and reckless of spiritual acts. 
So it draws them to it with a moral momen- 
tum which increases as they approach: with 
a force almost like that of the physical suc- 
tion of a current or a whirlpool. Once start- 
ed on their course to it, opposing argument 
becomes nearly powerless. The pull of this 
immense and consummate system is so stren- 
uous and enveloping that theological, philo- 
sophical, historical objections are evaded or 
overleaped by the yielding mind, as are rocks 
in a rapid by rushing timbers. 

Where it has once become firmly estab- 
lished it impregnates every thing with its 
mysterious and penetrant influence. It be- 
comes a pervading spiritual presence ; which 
has irs voices not only in the pulpit or iu 
books of devotion, but iu homes, and schools, 
and all places of concourse ; which touches 
life at every point where that is sensitive 
and responsive ; which is associated with 
ancestral memories and renown, and more 
vitally associated with the hopes of the fu- 
ture. It gives stability to rank, yet makes 
the hnmblest at home amidst its more than 
royal pageants. It invites the scholar to a 
happy seclusion, yet smites the most labori- 
ous life with a gleam from the supernatural. 
It paints the story of Christ on windows, 
and carves it in lordly and delicate marbles, 
for the eager and wondering eyes of child- 
hood, and for the fading sight of age. It 
occupies itself with imperial cares, yet con- 
nects itself intimately with the deepest as- 
pirations which move the soul, and with its 
longing love for the dead. It is like dis- 
placing the atmosphere to remove it. Re- 
bellion against it seems to dislocate the 
frame of society itself. Only a tremendous 
moral reaction, inspired and sustained by 
forces which are in their nature incompress- 
ible, and which have been gathering through 
successive generations, can break its hold on 
a nation which once it has firmly grasped. 

It is still too recent and too limited with 
us to have such a general sweep of power. 
But it is working, with unwearied resolu- 
tion, to make itself supreme among us. Its 
very strangeness gives it prominence in our 
American or English society ; as a palm-tree 
attracts more attention than an oak. It 
brings forces that have been disciplined for 
a thousand years to act on our plastic mod- 
ern life ; and converts to it may be expected 
from many quarters. 

Some have held its doctrine before, in the 
feebler, more fanciful, and more fragmentary 



STORRS : THE APPEAL OF ROMANISM TO EDUCATED PROTESTANTS. 459 



form in which that is avowed by a section, 
for example, of the Augelican communion, 
in England and here. Their logical sense 
must carry them to its conclusions, if log- 
ical sense has been able to maintain itself 
through the enfeebling prettiness of their 
previous career. 

Some, holding the evangelical doctrine 
of the Divinity of our Lord, and the pres- 
ent operation of the Holy Ghost, find here 
what seems to them the necessary comple- 
ment, and the justifying reason, of these 
transcendent disclosures ; the only exact 
and final antithesis to Socinianism, or even 
to atheism. Some are drawn to it by the 
fervor of feeling, the energy of pathetic and 
admonishing eloquence, which mark the ser- 
mons of the Paulists, and of others who, like 
them, appear from their retreats to stir men's 
hearts as messengers from God. Some sim- 
ply and gladly react into it from a rest- 
less, sad, and weary skepticism. But all are 
greatly in earnest when they go. They 
are true devotees, and they rarely return. 
They are usually Ultramontanists afterward. 
There is nothing languid, moderate, tepid, 
in their conviction or their feeling. They 
are resolute, enthusiastic, with a fire of zeal 
which works alike in brain and heart. And 
they have a tone of assurance in their words, 
and of certainty of victory. Bellarmine is 
their favorite theologian. De Maistre is 
widely popular with them. Hyacinthe and 
Dollinger are " fallen angels." 

They had no trouble with the dogma of 
Papal Infallibility. It was desired and wel- 
comed by them, as articulating what had 
been latent for centuries in the unvoiced 
consciousness of the Church, and as bring- 
ing the whole system to its legitimate and 
prophesied climax. That Pope Honorius 
had been formally condemned by the Sixth 
Council, his dogmatic writings burned as 
heretical, and his name anathematized and 
stricken from the liturgy, was not even a 
hindrance to the eagerness of their faith. 

They make great sacrifices for their con- 
victions, and do it joyfully. Indeed, the 
sacrifice becomes to them a fresh motive, an 
argument for the system which demands it. 
For, according to the cross shall be the 
crown, and they who have come out of great 
tribulation shall find their robes of a more 
lustrous white. Before the intensity of their 
aspiration the ties of friendship, the strong- 
est bonds of earthly relationship, if tending 
to withhold them from the Church of their 
desire, yield and are severed as flaxen fibres 
in the flame. For they regard the system 
which they accept, not only as essential to 
the future of mankind, to the well-being of 
persons, to the safety and glory of peoples 
and states; they regard it as alone Divine 
in its nature, overwhelming in its authori- 
ty, whose touch should properly shatter and 
consume whatever opjwses it. Even the 



temporary toleration of a different faith is 
to them an unwelcome necessity. A system 
of popular education not pervaded by Ro- 
man Catholic influences, is ensnaring and 
dangerous. They have the courage of their 
convictions ; and they use without stint the 
instruments of Protestantism to further their 
system and to make it universal. 

Even present failure does not dishearten 
them. That they expect; and they can 
wait, for the Church lives on. The ages 
are hers; and to her supreme incorporeal 
life, which time does not waste nor change 
impair, the final victory always is sure ! 

If we are to resist the vast effort of these 
men, and to make the liberties which our 
fathers bequeathed to us, and the Gospel in 
which they surely trusted, supreme in the 
land, we must at least know more than we 
have known of the seductive and stimula- 
ting forces which operate against us, and 
which we are to encounter. To treat the 
cases of those who have gone from us to 
Rome as merely sporadic — the effect of acci- 
dental causes, or of personal eccentricity — 
one might as well treat thus the power 
which drives the Gulf Stream northward, 
or which hurls the monsoons of the In- 
dian Ocean back and forth across the equa- 
tor. 

The one tremendous fact against them is 
that they can not alter, and can not obliter- 
ate, the record of the past. Their system 
has been abundantly tried ; and, fascinating 
as it looks, its prodigal promises have been 
proved as unreal as the stately pleasure- 
dome of Kubla Khan seen by Coleridge in 
his dream. The scheme which looks so se- 
ductive and magnificent, when searched by 
the passionless logic of events, when tested 
in the slow and solemn ordeal of succeeding 
centuries, in Italy, Spain, Mexico, the West 
Indies, turns out as unreal in what it claims 
and in what it proposes, as the island of No- 
where in the famous romance of Sir Thomas 
More. 

Good men have lived under it, multitudes 
of them ; saintly women, as pure and devout 
as ever brightened the earth with their pres- 
ence; and such live in it now. But their 
goodness is wholly and constantly parallel- 
ed outside their communion, because it has 
come, not from what is peculiar to that, but 
from the quickening light of God's Word, 
and the transforming energy of his "Spirit, 
which we as freely and consciously partake. 
In that which is peculiar to it — its hie- 
rarchy, its ritual, its efficacious sacraments, 
its indulgences to the sinner, its vast and 
complex organization, the concentration of 
all authority in its " Vice-God" at Rome — 
wherever the system has had its way it has 
wrought such mischiefs that the pen hesi- 
tates to recount them. 

It has been powerful to depress peoples, 



460 



ROMANISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 



ineffectual to uplift them. It has, with sure 
instinct, discouraged and diminished secular 
enterprise. It lias linked itself most natu- 
rally with the harshest and most tyrannous 
civil institutions. It has made religion a 
matter of rites, and a matter of locality; till 
the same man became a devotee in the chap- 
el, and a bandit in the field. It has accepted 
a passionate zeal for the Church in place of 
the humility, the purity and charity, which 
Christ demanded ; till the fierce Dominic be- 
comes one of its saints ; till forged decretals 
were made for centuries to bulwark its pow- 
er; till its bottest anathemas have been 
launched at those who complained of its 
abuses; till all restraints of humanity or 
morality have been overleaped in many ex- 
cesses to whicb its adherents bave been 
prompted from the altar. Its most devoted 
and wide-spread order, the Society of Jesus, 
in spite of its invincible heroism and its un- 
equaled services to the popes, by tbe mon- 
strous maxims which Pascal exposed, and 
the practices wbicb expressed them, so kin- 
dled against it the indignation of Christen- 
dom that Clement XIV. was compelled' to 
suppress it in all Christian states. 

The rage of this system against whatever 
would hinder its march — against its own sub- 
jects when they have conscientiously paused 
in their submission — has had something 
transcendent in its pitiless malignity. The 
fierceness of its persecutions has been pre- 
cisely proportioned to its j>ower. The baud 
which looks so full of blessing has opened 
the deep of oubliettes, bas added tortures to 
the rack, has framed the frightful Iron Maid- 
en, has set the torch to martyr fires. The 
breath which should have filled the air with 
sweeter than Sabaean odors has blighted 
the bloom of many lives, and floated curses 
over the nations so frequent and so awful 
that life itself was withered before them, till 
their very extravagance made them harm- 
less. 

Instead of true wisdom, where this sys- 
tem has prevailed with an unquestioned 
supremacy, it has fostered and maintained 
wide popular ignorance. Instead of true 
sanctity, its fruit has been shown in peasant- 
ries debased, aristocracies corrupted, an ar- 
rogant and a profligate priesthood. It has 
honored the vilest who would serve it, and 
crushed the purest who would not. It sent 
gifts and applause, and sang its most exult- 
ing Te Deum, for Philip the Second ; while 
its poisoned bullet killed William of Orange. 
The medal which it struck in joyful com- 
memoration of the bloody diabolism of St. 
Bartholomew's is one of its records. Its 
highest officials have sometimes lived lives 
which its own annalists have hated to touch. 
Alexander VI., cruel, crafty, avaricious, li- 
centious, whom it were flattery to call a Ti- 
berius in pontificals — who bribed his way 
to the highest dignity, who burned Savona- 



rola, the traditional portrait of whose favor- 
ite mistress, profanely painted as the Moth- 
er of God, hangs yet in the Vatican, who 
probably died by the poisoned wine which 
he had had prepared for his cardinals, and 
whose evil renown is scarcely matched by 
that of Caesar Borgia his son — stands as one 
of its infallible popes, holding the keys of 
heaven for men. 

If any system is doomed by its history, 
this is the one. Protestantism has now so 
checked it, the advancing moral develop- 
ment of mankind has set such limits to its 
power, that these are largely facts of the 
past. The Vatican Court is now free from 
scandal. The Church at present seeks 
strength through beneficence, not through 
control of the secular arm ; by its helps to 
piety, not through appeals to physical fear. 
But its more spontaneous and self-revealing 
development has been in this more friendly 
Past. Therefore the nations whom once it 
has ruled, when they finally break from it, 
hate it with an intensity proportioned to the 
promises it has failed to fulfill, and the bit- 
ter degradations it has made them undergo. 
Atheism itself — that moral suicide — seems 
better to them than to be again subjected 
to Rome. 

This is the system as realized in history, 
and there forever adjudged and sentenced. 
Of course this gives immense advantage to 
those who now resist its progress. It can 
not fascinate the nations again till the long 
experience is forgotten. But such is not 
at all its appearance as presented to those 
whom it wins to its fold. And we must 
look at it, in a measure at least, as those 
who honor and love it look, if we would un- 
derstand its power, if we would know how 
it is that it hopes a second time to conquer 
the world. 

Travelers have often and glowingly de- 
scribed the silver and golden illuminations 
of St. Peter's, as seen from the Pincian Hill 
at Rome, on the great Easter festival. Won- 
derful, ethereal, almost celestial, appears the 
majestic Basilica, with its dome, when sud- 
denly over all its lines flashes that startling, 
unearthly radiance. 

It has never been noticed, so far as I have 
observed, that the illumination is wholly con- 
fined to that half of the dome which fronts the 
city. Tbe other remains frowning and stern, 
while this is glowing through the darkness 
like a golden temj)le let down by God from 
heaven to earth. 

We must not look only, as often we do, 
on the sombre and sterile side of Romanism, 
if we would comprehend its attraction. We 
must know, and feel, that there are aspects 
of it in which, to those who look with admir- 
ing eyes on its immense illuminated front, it 
appears more beautiful and serene than any 
vision of poets, while as solid and command- 
ing as the very, and only, Temple of God. 



&t)c Appeal of Romanism to (fbucateo fJrotestants. 



A PAPER READ BEFORE THE 

EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE, 

New York, October 8, 1873. 



By RICHARD S. STORRS. D.D. 

OF BROOKLYN, N. Y. 



EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE CONFERENCE, 1873. 

History, Essays, Orations, and Other Documents of the Sixth 
General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance, held in New 
York, October 2-12, 1873. Edited by Rev. Philip S chaff, D.D., 
and Rev. S. Iren&us Prime, D.D. With Portraits of Rev. 
Messrs. Pronier, Carrasco, and Cook, recently deceased. 8vo, 
Cloth, nearly 800 pages, $6 00. 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS. Franklin Square, New York. 

Sent l>v mail on receipt of $6 oo. 






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